The board members of the San Diego Symphony had a single question when they first considered the possibility of the orchestra touring China.

“They were all asking, who is June Shillman?” said June Shillman. “They didn’t know who I was.”

The short answer: Shillman, who now lives in Rancho Santa Fe with her husband, Robert Shillman, was a dancer with the People’s Liberation Army during China’s Cultural Revolution. And she’s not somebody who easily takes no for an answer. Especially when she decided that the San Diego Symphony should visit Yantai, San Diego’s sister city.

“People on the board, they said it was impossible,” Shillman said.

Given that the San Diego Symphony is the only major U.S. orchestra with a Chinese-American conductor (Jahja Ling), and San Diego’s strong Asian connections, a Chinese tour had often been mentioned in orchestra circles, but never seriously considered.

Even Shillman’s colleagues in the San Diego-Yantai Friendship Society, which she serves as president, were skeptical.

But the friends and connections she had made in China during her tenure with the People’s Liberation Army were now high-ranking government and cultural officials — and they knew better.

“I called them up and they said, ‘You can move the mountain,’ ” she said. “ ‘You are a diamond; you can shine. We will support you.’ All of my friends helped me.”

This week, after performing for the first time in Carnegie Hall on Tuesday, the orchestra will fly to Yantai, where it performs Saturday with violin soloist Joshua Bell and Sunday with Augustin Hadelich. The orchestra will also play in Beijing and Shanghai before returning home Nov. 10.

“It was touch and go with the board,” said board chair Evelyn Olson Lamden. “But June is very influential in a very positive way. She makes you want to work with her. And she has a determination and a personality that’s relentless. She decided this was going to happen.”

The Chairman’s dancer

Shillman was 11 years old and the Cultural Revolution was in full swing when representatives of China’s Central Arts Committee visited Shanghai looking for young dancers and musicians. It’s a scene right out of the movie “Mao’s Last Dancer.”

“It was just like that,” Shillman said. “In China, the highest level is the army, and I was chosen by the army to go to school. I was very lucky. In the whole of Shangai, almost 20 million people and (they) choose one girl — me.”

She was immediately taken from her family, enlisted into the People’s Liberation Army, given a uniform, and enrolled in classes with the Red Star Dance Company in Beijing. After four years of rigorous training, she was admitted to the elite PLA Dance Ensemble Group, which represented China internationally.

As the Cultural Revolution wound down in the mid-’70s, and ultimately ended with Mao’s death in 1976, Shillman continued to dance but realized that wasn’t her future.

“I knew I had to change my career, because dancing is something for (when you are) young,” she said. “When you get older, you become a teacher, or maybe you become a choreographer. Two choices. But in China, choreography is very difficult because of politics.”

She wanted to do something arts-related, so after retiring from the army, she attended design school in Tokyo, where she met her future husband while working as a waitress. Their engagement allowed her to leave China and come to Boston to get married.

“I didn’t speak a word of English,” she said. “It was very difficult, but I was determined to be here.”

They arrived in San Diego eight years ago (prompted by the weather and the location), and Shillman eventually joined the boards of the San Diego Youth Symphony and Conservatory (her children were members), the La Jolla Music Society and the San Diego-Yantai Friendship Society.

“First thing after I agreed to become president (of the Friendship Society), I have to visit Yantai,” she said. “So I visit Yantai and see the cultural general. He’s so proud and he tells me, ‘Yantai residents love classical music, and I have a beautiful concert hall.’ ”

They went and saw the hall, and Shillman had an idea: “I said, ‘How about this: Maybe I can bring the San Diego Symphony here; we’ll have a cultural exchange.’ He said, ‘Good idea.’ ”

Relationships matter

Getting even the best ideas accomplished in China can be challenging, especially for Western organizations. There are multiple levels of bureaucracy, with the lower levels apparently hesitant to make a decision and the upper levels — typically government officials — not always accessible.

“It’s a wild game,” said Tommy Phillips, the orchestra’s director of artistic planning, who negotiated the symphony’s contracts with the Chinese. “But we’ve got our contracts signed and we’re going, with a lot of help from June Shillman and her connections.”

Shillman was involved in nearly every aspect of the tour, whether taking symphony representatives (including Phillips) to China twice to meet with cultural officials or making countless phone calls when the inevitable glitches occurred. At one crucial juncture, when it looked like the orchestra could not get the date it needed in Shanghai, Shillman had to call the “top boss.”

His wife had been Shillman’s roommate at the Red Star Dance Company, and she had known both of them for years.

“I called him and said: ‘I talked to the manager and he said no. Call him and tell him to take care of the San Diego Symphony. You must help me.’ He said, ‘No problem.’ ”

Two hours later, Phillips had an email confirming the date.

She also had numerous conversations with the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, which was instrumental in helping to facilitate the tour. But like others, they may have had some initial reservations.

“Because I grew up in China, I know what kind of way you can reach success,” Stillman said. “I told them, ‘When I was raised in China, they taught me, when you have a problem, you have to call on the Communist Party. And now I’m calling the Communist Party.’

“They laughed.”

But in a good way.

“I never think about fail,” she said. “If I say I can do it, I can do it.”